


Fumbling Together

by chirality (vivider)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adulthood, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Hermione is a very bossy drunk, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mature Ron, Mentions of Dursley abuse a bit more graphic than canon, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, we sort of look at canon and then ignore it sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 05:31:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4613052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivider/pseuds/chirality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Featuring Finally Out of Denial Harry Potter, Depressingly Heterosexual Ron Weasley, Fed Up With Binaries Hermione Granger, and the sexual fluidity, confessions, and discovery that come with adulthood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fumbling Together

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into HP fandom. I should mention that I only read HBP and DH once, and am not especially concerned with being canon compliant. 
> 
> Second chapter will be Hermione's POV, third and final chapter will be Harry. 
> 
> This desperately needs some Brit picking so if anyone would like to volunteer, or is interested in being a beta for this or any other HP fics, let me know! I did my best but I'm worried it's a bit heavy handed.

It begins, as many ill-wrought confessions do, in a pub. Or, not a pub, exactly, but in Ron's flat and with rather a lot of alcohol.

It had taken several years after the end of the war for any of them to feel truly comfortable being intoxicated. Hermione was reluctant largely, but not exclusively, out of propriety; Harry out of pure paranoia, staunchly refusing to acknowledge any malingering PTSD; and Ron out of solidarity, refusing to drink to drunkenness when the three of them went out together when he'd be the only one. Nothing more embarrassing than that. When it was him and the old Gryffindor guys (minus Harry) he'd let loose, but it's different with the three of them and no one else can understand that sometimes it's hard to remember the war is over.

Ron does the best at it. Not to say he hadn't been scarred by it, too (Hermione's gurgling during torture, the way he'd abandoned them, the creeping cold horror of how willingly Harry had gone to his own death-- and Fred and his mum's wails and everything else of it, even the senseless waste of Snape and Lupin and Tonks dying). Well, there was all that, but the present comes a lot more easily to him than Hermione, fixated on the future and how she could mend it, and Harry, dwelling on the past and all the ways he'd failed or what he'd lost.

Finally, though, one day Ron manages to persuade them, largely by using a new tactic: they'd drink in his apartment, with no one the wiser, all the wards up, them to look out for each other. It works a charm, and he rues that he hadn't thought of it before. Whiskey was too much for his two lightweight friends, he thinks with affection, so he bought that for himself and stocked some muggle vodka and cranberry juice for them. (And hopes Hermione doesn't ask the story of him buying it.)

'Mione arrives first, sweeping in through the Floo with all her determined grace not to seem unfamiliar with wizarding methods despite being a muggleborn. Her hair is swept into a messy bun, bits of it sticking out, and she impatiently tucks some away after flicking the soot off of her robes with her wand. "Hello, Ron," she says, and in the next breath goes on fretfully, "I'm not sure this is a good idea, still. You know Harry gets maudlin sometimes. Alcohol is a depressant--"

Ron groans. "Couldn't you have stopped at hello?" he complains, standing to usher her to the card table he used as a dining table.

"I'm worried!" she insists, biting her lip. "Ever since, well, with Ginny, he hasn't had anyone but us to pull him out from that dusty monstrosity. I don't like him shut up in Grimmauld Place all the time and getting him started on liquor is hardly going to help."

"We're not 'getting him started on liquor'," he answers with a sigh. "I swear. It's a bit of fun, alright? We're just to relax. That includes you, by the way. Don't think I haven't noticed you've been on one crusade after another this past year. Harry's well enough, let the man do things on his own time. He doesn't need to be on your list."

She sniffs faintly, though Ron couldn't tell whether from sentiment or disparagement, and it's just as well he never finds out when the floo _wooshes_ again.

Harry stumbles out, never having gotten the hang of it in all this time; he's just gotten less ashamed. He ruffles a hand through his hair, making no appreciable difference, and offers a quick, grateful, "Thanks," to 'Mione when she flicks her wand and the soot all flies off of him, too. " 'Lo, Ron," he adds, cheerfully enough despite Hermione's dire pronouncement a second ago.

Ron shoots her a look -- _see, he's fine_ \-- which causes her to roll her eyes and Harry's eyebrows to go up, but he knows better than to intervene between the two of them and they clasp hands in perfunctory hello. "I was just telling our favorite busybody that she's to relax, too, instead of just mothering us both to death. You'd think she was here to stage an intervention, not have a drink, the way she's carrying on."

He knows Harry wouldn't want the conversation to swing to his mental health and, sure enough, he looks briefly alarmed at that hint and leaps on the gambit Ron had provided. "You need a break sometimes," Harry agrees, joining them at the table. He swings a chair out and sits down, causing them both to take their own seats, Hermione frowning speculatively at Harry.

"I am having one," she protests. "I'm here, aren't I? I just… I suppose it's difficult, not seeing you both every day as we used to. I have to owl you to find out what's going on instead of whispering in corridors. But I know we can't live in each other's pockets as adults."

There's a resonating silence for a long moment as they all digest that, then glumly acknowledge the reality of it.

"Yeah," Harry sighs. "I know. I trust, well, most of the other Aurors, but I can't help but think some of them would freeze right up if Lucius Malfoy appeared out of the ether to kidnap me." Ron has the suspicion this is a nightmare Harry has had before, but not one that truly bothered him, because he'd brought it up so easily.

"Don't worry, if Malfoy kidnaps you, I'll sodding hex him," Ron says cheerily, sanguine about retaliatory violence toward Death Eaters. He goes about pouring them drinks without comment on it, then pushes them their glasses and raises his own.

"To having each other's backs, but not needing to hex anyone to do it," he declares.

"To using this peace to keep it that way," says Hermione resolutely.

But all Harry puts in is a quiet, "To being here," that makes something in Ron's gut tighten. They all clink their glasses, and the loyalty he feels for these two pulses hotly in his chest.

\---

Harry is well into his cups, and contrary to 'Mione's dour premonition had taken to it affably. He's strewn out on the couch, more fully relaxed than Ron had seem him in years-- since Sirius was alive, honestly-- and he revels in the smug happiness of a job well done as friend.

He casts Hermione a pointed look (again) and she huffs at him, but smiles widely, and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek without vocalizing what for. But Ron knows. Hermione isn't the greatest at figuring out how to console others, for all her earnestness, and she appreciates how well they fill in each other's gaps in their self-appointed _taking care of Harry_ duties. No one else is left alive that would do it if they didn't, after all; Harry loves his mum but rejects anything too maternal from her; and in some ways they'd been doing it already since they were eleven. Harry, he's aware, didn't see it that way, and would be mortified and indignant at being treated as a dependant.

He isn't, really. He isn't a dependant. But he is _theirs_ and they both know he needs them.

"I thought you two weren't going out," comes Harry's fuzzy voice from the couch.

Mione and Ron both pink. "We're not," she says definitively, and Ron nods quickly.

Harry squints at them, then slumps. "S'alright if you are. I won't make it weird. Don't expect I'll be dating anyone maybe ever, shouldn't keep you two from… from… having a go of it."

Hermione suddenly looks deeply sad, much to Ron's puzzlement, but it's pushed aside in light of Harry's odd comment. "What d'you mean, won't be dating anyone 'maybe ever'? What's wrong with you, then? You're the one who left Ginny, you can't still have written yourself off of romance forever, two years later."

Ron steadfastly ignores Hermione's angry jab into his ribs from where she's perched on the arm of his chair. Harry falls into a stony silence Ron hasn't seen much of lately but recognizes immediately.

Mione fills in the dead air for him, unsurprisingly. "You don't grieve on a schedule, Ronald. And he's allowed to be upset even if he's the one who broke it off! He had every right to--"

"He's right here," Harry cut in, grumpily. He always did hate being talked over.

Hermione turns to face him more properly and goes on, a little snottily in Ron's opinion, "You should tell him, you know. In fact, I demand it. I'm sick of you -- you-- hiding yourself away, when there's nothing about you that deserves being hidden. And Ron deserves a chance, too, and you know it."

Deeply alarmed by this conversational turn, Ron throws in a hasty, "Hey now, what are you on about--"

Here goes his quiet evening, he thinks, with the abject disappointment of someone watching it swirl down the drain, as Harry pushes himself angrily up from his lazy position on the couch. "I can't believe you just said that," he says in a low tone, all his hackles up, meaning Mione had scored a solid, direct hit.

Well, of course. She always does.

She shoots to her feet and narrows her eyes at him and says loudly, "Harry James Potter, this has gone on long enough. I won't further you keeping secrets any longer. From the world, yes, you've a right to your privacy, but asking me to keep this from Ron along with you isn't-- isn't _right_."

What the hell could Hermione know about Harry that Ron doesn't? Despite himself, he feels left out, and the hurt wells up in him before he can control it. "You've… told her something but not me?" he repeats, dumbly. "Is it _about_ me?"

"Hermione," Harry hisses helplessly, looking, now that Ron's examining him closely, panicked rather than sullen.

"No," she retorts stoutly. "I'm leaving and I'm shutting the floo behind me and I'll, I'll be 'round tomorrow to see that you're both alright, but you should tell him. For your sake." She has the intensity of being right behind her, and that crippling compassion that always hamstrings Harry, and sure enough, they both just stare stupidly at her as she sweeps away and out the floo and does as she'd said. The floo shuts with a resounding clank and leaves a tense silence behind it.

Ron reflects during this awkward, pained interlude that Hermione was really rather drunker than he'd thought, to have her bossiness overcome her that thoroughly.

"You didn't answer," Ron says at last, with more composure than he'd ever had for a minute in his teens, "when I asked if it was about me."

Harry is avoiding looking at him, still upright on the couch. One hand is on his neck and the other is limp in his lap. He looks beat down, defeated, practically thrumming with nervousness. Ron hasn't seen _this_ look aimed at him since fourth year when he'd been a prat and thought Harry had put his name in the Cup.

"It's not. I mean, it's not really."

"Not really?"

"I, uh--" He lets out a puff of air in frustration. "This is going all wrong. But if Hermione wants me to tell you, then _fine_. It's too weird having to hide anything from you and it's been itching at me for ages, honestly, I just…" Harry swallows. "I've been scared it would change something, and it shouldn't. I don't want it to."

Ron is well aware that Harry would rather throw himself off of a cliff, and nearly has done in the past, to avoid losing his two closest friends. He suddenly understands his source of nervousness and curses himself for being a blind, selfish idiot when he was in the throes of hormones as a teenager. That's what had established a precedent for Harry to fear so specifically, after all. "It won't," he vows fiercely, leaning forward to place a hand on Harry's knee, which makes Harry go absolutely still. "You know it won't, mate. We've been through too much. You didn't even mean to tell Hermione, did you?" he asks knowingly.

Harry's head jerks up to stare at him, then he smiles faintly, ruefully. "I forget you're that sharp sometimes. No, I didn't tell her at all. She just…" He shrugs helplessly.

"Yeah," Ron agrees, understanding.

He's expecting Harry to go on, but there's nothing, just fidgeting in more silence. He starts to feel a bit of sympathy with Hermione over his continued reticence and butts in with, "Just out with it. It won't be that bad once it's out. Er, will it?" He braces himself with mounting horror. "Has something _happened_?"

He'd thought if it was Voldemort related, Harry'd have told him straight away-- and sure enough, to his relief, Harry's eyes widen and he shakes his head. "No, no, nothing like that. It's stupid, really. Like I said, I don't… I don't intend to date anyone." He has a resigned but determined air about it, which Ron knows is how he gets when he won't let anyone else tell how hurt he is by something, and he frowns, wondering who he needs to punch, but Harry's already screwing up his considerable courage and blurting out, "I'm gay."

"You're what?" he asks blankly.

"I'm _bent_ , Ron. I like blokes."

"You're-- _oh_! But what's all the fuss with, then? It, I mean, er, it explains a lot, doesn't it, and I wouldn't have been mad at you over Gin for half that long. I know it's looked down on by purebloods but you can't think that I'd care about _that_. I'm not your bloody mam, I don't care if you continue the Potter line or not."

This is a potentially crass comment, given Harry's dead family, but Ron is thoroughly taken aback, thoughts whirling in all directions. This clears up some things, and others not at all.

Harry looks somewhat shell-shocked, and fainter than the amount of liquor he'd ingested could account for. Ron hurriedly shifts his hand from his knee to his arm. "Steady on. You really thought I'd flip at you over it?"

He feels that hurt rising up again.

"It's… for some muggles, it's a big deal," Harry says slowly, reluctantly, the words drawn out by tweezers.

At first, Ron doesn't get it. "I'm hardly a muggle," he says with a snort, before his brain clicks over and that earlier urge to punch someone rises up with a vengeance and takes hold of him, this time with a suggested target. " _No_. Those bloody muggles-- they--"

Shifting, Harry slides out from under his hand to curl one leg up toward his chest, looking for all his age of twenty-five to be about twelve. His voice is soft as he admits, "Yeah." And that's all he says.

But Ron knows that _yeah_. That _yeah_ is bars on his windows and coming back every summer stick thin and looking shattered the first time Mum had hugged him, and how he'd nearly started crying when they'd invited him to Christmas the first year after he'd broken up with Ginny, convinced they wouldn't want him back. Harry barely ever says anything, nothing past a the rare dark mutter before every summer hols, and never after them, nothing after. He'd never said a word when the Dursleys sent him an ugly, threadbare sock and fifty pence at Christmas, either.

The Dursleys were an invisible ghost behind Harry that dogged his steps, and if sometimes they faded from view and went unseen for months or years, they never truly left. For them to have cowed Harry into silence on his preferences for this long, for him to not even have meant to tell _Hermione_ , champion of justice and equality that she was, it was bad. It was _severe_.

"Budge over," Ron says roughly, because his throat is swelling closed and he can't do this, can't take Harry sitting there like he's ruddy twelve and everyone thinks he's the Heir of Slytherin again. He pushes Harry to the side on the couch to make room for him with all the unconscious familiarity of someone who's shared a dorm for six years and then a camp tent for far too long. Harry looks dazed, nearly confused. Is he that relieved that Ron isn't acting any differently?

Merlin.

Clearing his throat, Ron has squeezed in next to him and casually laid an arm around his friend's shoulders and not said a word about his posture. "You know, Percy is as bent as Dumbledore, and a swot besides, and we still don't make him sit in the kitchen at family dinner."

Harry stares at him owlishly, though he'd replaced his round glasses with more adult-looking rectangle frames two years ago. "He is?"

Ron rolls his eyes. " _Yes_ , he's just too good to go telling us lot about his _assignations_ , isn't he? Probably because we laugh every time he says the word _assignation_."

Sure enough, that gets a watery snort out of Harry, who surreptitiously turns his face to the side for a second and scrubs with his sleeve. Ron affects not to notice out of pure friendship.

"And then there's Charlie," he goes on, warming to this topic, to make Harry believe _maybe_ after all this time that he really is part of this family, the way he always has been.

A glance over at him. "What about Charlie?"

"He, well, he's not interested in anyone. At all." His brow furrows. "Or maybe not at all, I don't know. I don't pretend to get it. But it doesn't matter, Harry. Mum doesn't weep at him about wanting more grand-kids, do you get it? She's not going to guilt him over something he can't help. It'd be as bad as wanting Hermione to feel guilty over being muggleborn."

There's a hitch of breath. Harry twists and turns into him, _finally_. Ron feels the thrill of victory he always feels at having Harry's exclusive attention and admiration, and he'd only been too dense to realize when he was younger just how often he did have it. As an adult, it's a lot clearer. Harry treats him (and Hermione, and to a lesser extent, all the Weasleys) completely differently from anyone else in the entire world. Harry would never tilt in toward and press against anyone else like this.

He knows, too, that it signifies that Harry is sure of his reception, after Ron's cavalier dismissal of his brothers' sexualities. He wouldn't have risked rejection. A lot of people think Ron is still that dense kid he was, and okay, a lot of the time he is, but he knows _Harry_ like he knows Hermione and he can read them intuitively.

"I've never thought of it like that before," he hears, quiet. The hand around Harry's shoulders idly, nonchalantly slides down to rest on his back. 

"Well, it's how I think of it. So you've got nothing to worry about, alright? I wish you'd told me sooner so it wouldn't have twisted you up so long. Merlin, I hate to say this, but I'm glad Mione did stage an intervention."

Harry laughs into his chest. "I guess I am, too."

He seems too overwrought to say anything after that. Ron lets him sit in peace for a time, gathering himself. Of course, it also gives his mind time to turn over what he's learned, and he chews on a question for a bit. But with the alcohol numbing his verbal filter (such as his ever is) and making the words loosen, he eventually gives it voice.

"Harry?"

A wordless noise of attention.

"Did you ever… er. Y'know, think of me that way?"

Very still for a second, and then Harry sits all the way up and off of him, expression set. "Yes, but I knew nothing would ever come of it, you don't have to worry. I'm over it." He says it all in one breath as if to make sure Ron would listen to the entire sentence.

There's no danger of that; Ron is gaping at him. He'd asked it, but he hadn't really thought that would be the answer. "What?"

" _Yes_ , alright? But it's done with." He's all tense again, and this time Ron feels he's regressed ten years because he can't do a thing for it when his mind is all awash with _what_?

"But, well, why?"

"Why?" Harry stares at him. He sees something that Ron doesn't (maybe what Ron sees on him sometimes, really) and all of a sudden his words find iron strength. Harry's indomitable loyalty. "I don't know if you've noticed, but you're bloody fit. And you were my first friend in the world, 'sides from Hagrid, and you never made fun of me and you got over my celebrity pretty fast, and... " He visibly flounders. "You were _there_ , Ron, it wasn't easy for you but you've always been there for me." He lets out a gusty breath. "Rather like just now, actually."

Maybe he really is fifteen again because all he can say is a poleaxed, "You think I'm fit?"

Harry stares a moment longer and then wipes one hand down his face. "It can't be that shocking."

It really is. "I never had any clue!" he objects.

"That was the idea," says Harry with a sigh, taking his glasses off, swiping at his eyes one last time, and then replacing them. 

"Do you still think that?" Ron demands, driven by some need to know he can't fathom.

Startling again, Harry says, "Er." A beat later: "Aesthetically, sure. But you think of me like another brother. I wouldn't do that to you."

Ron can't help wondering if Harry hasn't been, incredible as it seems, pining a bit. It seems horrible. Ron has pined before and it's like a living thing has taken residence in your abdomen and set up shop messily, churning over and over like it's producing iron ingots right there, and fading only incrementally until one day you realize it's not there anymore. If Harry still thinks he's 'aesthetically' attractive, maybe he's not over him.

Ron feels dizzy. Harry, over him. Like there was something to get over. It's not horror or disgust or awkwardness creeping along his skin, either-- it's… something else. Sympathy? No, well, a little of that, but…

A profound, abiding sense of being flattered. Stronger-- pleasure. Pure pleasure. Harry, the person he looks up to most in the world, has been, he thinks, at least a little hung up on him for _years_. And Ron had never known. The uncharitable thought comes that maybe this was why he'd been with Ginny-- but no, ugh, he's never going to be cruel enough to say that, and he suspects instead that Harry had desperately tried to be straight for a long, long time.

He looks anew at Harry, wondering. Harry sees this and looks, in turn, unsettled. But no, Ron doesn't see him any differently. There's no epiphany of him as a sexual being, no realization that all along he's been in love and hasn't realized it, no questioning of the fact that, Merlin's saggy sack, yes, he likes tits.

It's just Harry. Same as ever. Plain as that and one third of his life.

Hesitantly, he suggests, "Could I try…?"

The uneasiness hasn't left Harry, and in fact, his nose is scrunching with suspicion. "Try what?"

Ron doesn't ask. He doesn't even have to find the balls to do it, honestly, he just does it because he has to know. Like now that the question has been poised to himself, he can't exist further without the next logical step of finding the answer. He leans in and presses his lips to Harry's and, ah, there it is, the awareness of the warm solid presence beside him and under his hand, fingers clenching into the fabric of his shirt. He fancies he can feel Harry's heartbeat ratcheting upward, wildly.

There's that one frozen moment of inaction during which Ron wonders if this was a terrible mistake and Harry's going to be furious with him (liking blokes and liking him in particular doesn't mean he wants to be kissed and Ron knows it). Then there's a surge of movement. Harry is all or nothing, action or inaction, no in between. He's like that in kissing, too, apparently, because he wrenches himself upward onto his knees and drives his hands into Ron's hair to tilt his head back, come in from above and kiss him, hard.

Their mouths open instinctively and their tongues find each other. Ron moans a soft sound, shocked; in his pants, his prick gives an interested twitch. He's only aware when they've surrendered each other for air when he hears Harry breathe, "Oh, _God_ ," like he's about to fly apart at the seams.

Ron's eyes fly open instead; it had been only half a good _oh, God_. The other half was pure paralysis. Harry is stuck, fixed in place, and though his eyes are wide he's not focused on anything but whatever's in his own head.

No. Hell no. Ron just kissed his first man and he's questioning everything he thought he'd known about his sexual preferences and even how he sees his own best friend, and he's not having the sodding Dursleys interfere with that.

"Look at me," he says harshly, finds his hands are clawing Harry's back and uses that to rock him on his lap since he can't shake him. "Look at me, Harry. It's just me. I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have kissed you--"

" _No_ ," is wrenched out of him, aghast. "No. Are you crazy? I wouldn't give that up for the world." That was rather more than Harry had meant to say, it seems, because Harry is taking great gulps of air right afterward as if he could suck it back in. Ron was right: he had been pining for him at least a bit. But now it makes him… sad. To think of Harry, all twisted up in his desires and lonely, thinking mournfully of Ron and wondering if he'd toss him out on his ear if he came clean.

Ron still isn't sure he isn't straighter than a ruler but he is sure that he won't let Harry go on like that. Has to make up for it, somehow. 

"Was that… your first?"

Another swallow. "With a bloke? Yes."

"Bloody hell, Harry," says Ron in amazement. "You've waited all this time? I, um, I hope it was worth it."

In his characteristically intense, low tone: "It was."

They both sit and breathe that in, trying not to think too hard about what this means or where it's going, before Ron can't avoid the implications any longer. He chews at the inside of his lower lip for a second before offering out, apologetically, "Pretty sure I'm still straight."

"I know," Harry sighs, and leans back, half-falling onto the couch to get off of his lap and straighten himself out beside him.

Kiss over, then. Ron feels both disappointed and weird about it. Does he really want to keep kissing Harry? Yeah, he supposes he does. Does he want to _sleep_ with him? He's not afire at the idea like the thought of a solicitous female Veela would make him, but he's sort of curious, too. At the very least, he doesn't think it would be bad. At worst he'd probably just not mind. He's done plenty of dreadful things for Harry's sake and a romp in the sheets with someone he greatly cares about really couldn't be at all dreadful.

But that wouldn't be fair to Harry. _At all_. It would, in fact, be one of the worst things Ron could do, and he doesn't need Hermione to beat him over the head to know that.

"Sorry," he says softly.

Harry shakes his head adamantly. "Don't be. You've been-- amazing about this. Like you said, you can't help how you are. And Hermione was right, you did deserve a chance. I'm the one who should be apologizing."

"Fine, we're both tossers who needed our heads knocked together. Just, you know, didn't want to make things harder for you." It comes out gruffly, but Ron means it.

Harry meets his eyes. "You haven't. I swear it's all fine." Yet after he says this, he stands up and gathers up his glass and Ron's and goes to take them into the kitchen to wash.

Ron watches him go as stupidly as he'd watched Mione swish off to the floo and all he can think is that he's way out of his depth, that it's a sorry state of affairs indeed if Harry's school days crush finally kissed him, told him he was still straight, and that was _better_ than what he'd been dealing with before-- and also that he wants to make this better.

Too bad his backup isn't arriving until morning.


End file.
